W.Va. family looks for answers to daughter's Corpus Christi murder

Police are looking for information on the Sept. 12, 2011 murder of Patricia Duling in the North Beach area. Call Crime Stoppers at 888-TIPS or visit www.888tips.com to report information.

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Patty Duling's body was found in a North Beach motel bathtub Sept. 12, 2011. She was stabbed more than 80 times and no arrests have been made in connection with her death.

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Patty poses with her mother, Sylvia Snodgrass, in January 2008 in Charleston, W. Va. Snodgrass talked to her daughter two days before Duling's Sept. 12, 2011, death.

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Patty Duling's homicide is one of four in 2011 that remain unsolved. Her body was found in a North Beach motel bathtub Sept. 12, 2011.

CORPUS CHRISTI - Even as a little girl, Patty was hardheaded and did things her way.

She would get in arguments with her mother, pack her dresses in a suitcase and walk down the street to her grandmother's house. When Patty cooled off, her mother would get her and bring her home.

She was stubborn but respectful, neighbors remember.

"Patty was a beautiful girl, and she had a big heart," said JoAnn Miller who lived down the street from her in Charleston, W. Va.

Patty's mother went through years of heartache and pain as Patty got older. Patty started using drugs and abusing alcohol, and her mother did everything she could to protect her from destroying her life.

It wasn't enough.

After 51 years, Sylvia Snodgrass said a final goodbye to her youngest daughter. Patricia "Patty" Duling's body was found in a North Beach motel bathtub Sept. 12, 2011. Her ashes traveled more than 1,300 miles from Corpus Christi to Charleston. They were mailed to her mother in a box nearly two weeks after a medical examiner studied more than 80 stab wounds in Patty's torso.

There was no candlelight vigil in Corpus Christi after her death, no memorial service honored her in the weeks and her brutal killing and no arrests have been made more than a year after her death.

Patty's killing is one of four in 2011 that remain unsolved.

For the most part, Patty was rejected and forgotten about — except by her family.

She was a daughter. A sister. More than just a headline.

"I miss her. I really, really miss her," Patty's mother said on the anniversary of her death. "She didn't deserve what happened to her."

'PARTY TIME'

Patty was the youngest of four children, who often went camping with her family and swimming off her dad's boat.

Snodgrass remembers Patty as a little girl wanting to be a construction worker like her father.

"I can't understand why," she said, "but she loved her dad and wanted to be whatever her dad was."

Patty attended Charleston High School about a year then dropped out when she was 16.

"She just didn't want to go to school," Snodgrass said. "I was surprised because I was giving her lunch money every day and she wasn't going."

Patty wanted to spend some time away from home, so she choose West Palm Beach, Fla., to live with her eldest sister Karen Ogburn. Her mother didn't mind the move because Patty was with family and helped raise Ogburn's son for about four years.

Ogburn didn't see any signs of Patty's drug abuse in Florida, she said. Being the youngest child, Patty was needy and her mother helped financially, Ogburn said. Patty could always depend on her mother, so when she was tired of Florida, Patty moved back home in 1984.

Shortly after, she met Bruce Duling, an electrician, at a bar in Kanawha City, only a few miles from Charleston. Patty was 23.

Because of his job, he moved to Charlotte, N.C., so Patty followed. Again, Snodgrass said she was OK with Patty leaving because she initially thought Bruce Duling and Patty were right for each other.

Patty had a history of following boyfriends to different cities and even different states.

"Maybe she didn't feel confident to work," Ogburn said," but she always seemed to have a boyfriend that would take care of her."

Patty would move in with her boyfriend, live with him for a couple of months and when they broke up she would move back home, Ogburn said, and that was probably the reason Patty never held down a job.

Bruce Duling and Patty married in 1988. Soon after, Patty's drug and alcohol abuse surfaced, her sister said. Ogburn didn't attend her sister's wedding because she was raising two children in Florida, but she knew Patty was going through more than she could control.

"It was party time for them," Ogburn said, "and there was probably a drinking problem with both of them."

Patty's mother wasn't aware of her daughter's addictions until Patty went to a drug rehabilitation center in Black Mountain, N.C.

"When she was (in Charleston) I never found that stuff because I didn't allow it in my house," Snodgrass recalled . "Whatever she was taking she couldn't afford to buy for herself."

The couple separated and divorced in 2000. Patty again moved back home. Snodgrass recognized that her daughter was a recovering drug and alcohol addict, and while she didn't allow drugs in her home, she limited Patty's alcohol intake.

"I would let her buy a six-pack of beer, and she would have to sip on it throughout the day," she said. "She knew that's all she would get."

About two years after Patty's divorce, she and a friend had been drinking at a bar for several hours and then the two left in his Corvette, Ogburn said. During their drive home, the car crashed. Patty was ejected from the sunroof and mangled her leg.

"They were both drunk and didn't remember who was driving," she said. "They were that drunk."

Bruce Duling later moved to Kanawha City where he was found shot to death February 2010 in the back of a car that was still running, according to WSAZ in Charleston, W.Va. A 16-year-old boy was arrested in connection with his murder and during his March trial prosecutors argued the boy shot and killed Duling, and another woman, after trying to sell fake crack.

Duling knew it was fake and threatened to kill the 16-year-old if he didn't give them back their money, prosecutors said. A jury found the boy not guilty.

'IN OVER HER HEAD'

Patty was 37 when her father, Lewis, died in 1997 from cancer. By the time he was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer, doctors told him it had spread to his entire body, Snodgrass said.

Patty was her father's daughter and made sure she was at home for him when his health started to deteriorate. The day he died the two were sitting on the couch. Patty had her head on his chest when he took his last breath.

After that, it was just Patty and her mother at home.

Patty didn't work, but instead helped her mother with household chores and church activities. The two frequently attended the small, white church down the road where they helped with church fundraisers, rummage sales and remodeling.

"When I had her here, I got her clean," she said.

Patty would buy things the two needed — paying for them with a $600 disability check she received every month after she nearly lost her leg.

But her mother's influence wasn't enough to keep Patty clean.

During the next six years, Patty was involved in relationships that resulted in repeated run-ins with police. Ten of the 16 police reports and court records that detail Patty's destructive behavior include her longtime boyfriend Leslie Moul.

The two met when a friend introduced them, and Moul was instantly attracted to her eyes, he said. They started dating right away and eventually moved to Fresno, Calif., together.

In January 2008, Fresno police were called to a hotel for a report of domestic violence. Police arrived at Patty and Moul's hotel room and noticed Patty's swollen and bruised face, both of her eyes were purple and bloodshot, and she had a small laceration above her left eyebrow, according to the report.

Police questioned Moul, who only said he was not there. Upon police request, a judge filed an emergency protective order for Patty against Moul. The domestic violence charges later were dismissed.

The relationship was rocky sometimes, Moul said, because they would get in arguments, but it was never abusive.

"Every time that Patty didn't get her way or I would leave to avoid an argument, and if I had anything at all to drink, she would call the police and have me pulled over," he said.

He blames the drugs and alcohol for affecting their relationship and said Patty introduced him to cocaine and crack.

Moul said she couldn't manage money and would throw temper tantrums, but he overlooked it because he loved her. He thinks about her often.

In their six years dating, Moul's construction jobs took him across the country.

Patty always followed. The two talked of marriage, and Moul said he proposed three times, but she always turned him down.

Ogburn said she noticed a change in Patty and Moul's relationship when the two lived in Fresno.

"I know she had that weakness of drugs and she was way in over her head," Ogburn said. "I think the drug situation popped its ugly head."

Patty was secretive about her and Moul's relationship, but once confessed to Ogburn that she had sold herself for crack and couldn't accept the Lord because of the bad things that she had done.

Ogburn wanted her sister to be happy and healthy, so when Patty moved home she was relieved, but knew it was only temporary.

Her mother said Patty was off the drugs and doing well, but in April 2011 Patty moved to Corpus Christi with Moul

"I tried to talk her out of it," Snodgrass said. "I didn't want her to go to Texas ... but how do you keep a 50-year-old woman away and do what you want?"

She asked Patty why she always followed and questioned if it was for love or money — Patty said it was for the money.

"I think she loved him," Snodgrass said. "But they fought more than they did anything else."

When Patty left for Texas, her mother said goodbye. It was the last time she saw Patty alive.

FINAL MOMENTS

Even though the two were more than 1,300 miles apart, Patty and her mother talked on the phone every day at 9:30 a.m. They would talk about the beach, people Patty met and what the family was up to.

"I could look forward to that telephone call every morning," Snodgrass said.

On Sept. 10, 2011, Patty called her mother to wish her a happy birthday. If Patty was in trouble or if there was a problem, her mother couldn't tell because there was no change in Patty's voice or tone and acted like every other time they spoke.

"I talked to her on my birthday and then two days later I got the phone call that she was dead," Snodgrass said.

On Sept. 12, 2011, Moul said he returned to his condominium about 6:30 p.m. in the 3900 block of Surfside Boulevard. When he noticed blood in the hallway and on the bed, he called police. Officers arrived and found her body in the bathtub and her nightgown and body covered in blood, police said.

Moul said he didn't think she would be in the condo when he arrived with his friend.

"I called all the hospitals because there was blood in the house," he said. "None of the hospitals heard of her and that's when I really got shook up and that's when I told my friend to call the police."

Before the police arrived, Moul said he had to use the bathroom and couldn't open the door, so he tried the other bathroom door, but it was locked.

He said he never saw Patty's body, but police later told him she was in there.

"I want somebody to pay for this," he said. "It's killing me every day that somebody is not paying for what they've done."

COLD CASE

More than a year later, Patty's family continue to ask the same questions: What happened to her, and who did this?

Police have no new leads in the case.

Corpus Christi Police Detective Richard L. Garcia said the case may be cold but that does not mean it's closed.

"All murders have a high priority," he said. "It doesn't matter what the victim was or wasn't. A person was killed no matter the lifestyle ... and they deserve justice."

Garcia took over Patty's case about a month after she was killed. He said detectives from the beginning have had a person of interest and he believes that same person killed her.

"Sometimes you can know somebody did something but you have to prove it," he said, "and that kind of proof sometimes is hard to get."

Early in the investigation, police collected evidence from the condo such as a knife, fingerprints and blood that they believed would help them catch the killer. But when the DNA results returned, there was not enough conclusive evidence.

Garcia's reviewed the case at least six times; read every interview and looked at each piece of evidence.

It appeared that Patty fought back. Neighbors said they heard people arguing.